Sex with Leonard Cohen…

Okay, not literally.

I’m not so worldly-experienced to have actual carnal knowledge of Leonard Cohen himself. However, as a long-standing fan of the high priest of pathos (who did not shy away from discussing his sexcapades through his artistry in ways which ricocheted between brutal and beautiful) I do have carnal knowledge of him, of sorts. I mean, this was a dude who wrote an album called Various Positions, for crying out loud. Go figure.

Image is of Marianne Ihlen, Leonard’s muse. Taken by him in Hydra. Courtesy of Getty Images.

Leonard Cohen’s life was multifaceted, to say the least, and his body of work was vast. His life really did imitate art, or maybe it was vice versa. He began as a poet and at some point realised that in order to gain more mainstream recognition for his talents as a wordsmith, he would need to put music to it (which makes sense as song writing is modern-day poetry). It’s also very difficult for anyone born after about 1895 to make any kind of sustainable living off of being poet exclusively. That ship has long-since sailed. So he joined the ranks of the folk community, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Joan Baez, Patti Smith, and so on, and found a new platform to waft his tactile words around.

For those just tuning in (as in you’re not overly/at all familiar with Leonard Cohen), I feel it’s only fair to say now that he did actually, over the course of his expansive career, cover a whole bunch of topics other than sex. He just happens to be the only writer I’m familiar with who was/is capable of creating such elegant smut… not that I’m particularly on the look-out for that sort of content, but we live in a world where sex sells, and sex is everywhere – whether or not you happen to be getting any yourself. Which Leonard clearly was…

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing something about Leonard Cohen for a while now, as his writing is one of my own key influences, but have found myself umming and ahhing over what angle to take. Yes, I could probably bash out a pretty good biography on him from a more colourful approach than say, Wikipedia, but really where’s the fun in that? He was too free-spirited and his work too special for some little shit like me to attempt to cover its entire expanse by way of a pale WordPress blog. So I thought I’d go for angles. I may (and probably will at some point) go in for the other areas of his life that are worth documenting. This was a man who lived a very bohemian life on the Greek island of Hydra for several years during the 1960s, then a couple of decades later would forsake that hazy romantic Mediterranean lifestyle in favour of becoming a Buddhist monk in the mountains of Tibet. So it’s safe to say the content is certainly there, so ya know, watch this space.

So the first angle I agreed with myself on was his sexual expression by way of his art. And why not? Sex and art don’t necessarily equate to pornography. More like eroticism, if we have to put a label on it. Not that we need to really. It’s the 21st century, we should be able to just discuss sex for what it is, but hey-ho. I’m sure there’ll be readers accusing me of honing in on the crass angle, and bypassing his other relevant opinions in favour of smut. I’ll allow it. It was obviously an important subject to him to arguably be the spinal column that propped up his body of work.

I think it needs to be said now: I’m not naive. I know that the subject of sex in music is not exactly a rare thing. I’m aware of this. Kings of Leon wrote a song called Sex on Fire back in 2008 and it was number one for weeks and weeks. And the lyrics are not subtle. I’m also familiar with the song Closer by Nine Inch Nails, which makes Sex on Fire sound like a nursery rhyme…

But like virtually every outlet in the twentieth century – from movies to fashion, and everything in between – music was no different in the sense that it was shackled by conservative restrictions in a desperate bid to maintain an air of modesty that our Victorian ancestors would be proud of. That is, right up until around the 1950s, when artists such as Elvis Presley and even Marilyn Monroe and her musical performances in her movies were like “Hmm. You know what. Let’s see what happens when we rock the boat a little….” And what happened? America’s youth – both male and female – exploded like a (sex) bomb.

But they were still quite modest by today’s standards, and here’s why: during the first half of the twentieth century, the film industry was dominated by something called the Hays Code. I won’t go into it in full because it’s long and boring, but basically it was a set of restrictions that prohibited writers and directors from screening anything even remotely risqué. And it wasn’t even just a generic “no tits and ass” thing. It was that plus a ton of ridiculous things like ‘it is prohibited to show a toilet being flushed” or “it is prohibited to film a male and female on a bed together” – even fully clothed. It was as if the American public, up until circa 1950, were considered to be children and shouldn’t be exposed to anything that wasn’t 100% wholesome imagery, and then almost collectively, everyone said “Fuck it. We want to see toilets being flushed and we want to see Grace Kelly and Humphrey Bogart getting their jollies off together on a bed. And show us the tits and ass while you’re at it.”

Well, it was kind of the same with the music industry. After the invention of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s, the post-war kids were doing it like bunnies, scot-free, so it’s natural that while society was evolving, so was the entertainment industry. Vive la sex!

Which, timing-wise, couldn’t have worked out better for Leonard Cohen. Screw the world of poetry. The stages of Glastonbury and Coachella are where it’s at.

So what, you may or may not be asking, (if you’ve stuck with me this far) is the big deal? Like I’ve said, every Tom, Dick and Harry who can wield a guitar has warbled away about bumping uglies. No big deal. What makes this Cohen guy so special? Well. The difference between saying “I like shagging” and “The delectable, delicious, euphoric experience one savours whilst embroiled in the divine act of coitus.”

It’s all about our good friend, language.

So here I’ve devised a list of a few of Leonard’s most eyebrow-raising or cockle-warming reminiscences of sex. A karma sutra of words, if you will… and not a f-bomb in sight…

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet.
Giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.”

– Chelsea Hotel #2

[NOTE: Those familiar with the song will undoubtedly know that it was written about his brief affair with Janis Joplin after the news hit of her untimely death, (she is a member of the famous 27 club, along with other artists who died at the age of 27, such as Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, etc) and comes across as almost a biographical account of their sexual coupling and the emotion (or lack of) behind it. It’s neither scathing or rose-tinted. It just is what it is. The song ends with the line “I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, but that’s all, I don’t even think of you that often.” An icy juxtaposition of two contradictory actions.]

“I’d love to see you naked over there,
especially from the back.
Take this longing from my tongue.
Whatever useless things these hands have done.
Untie for me your hired blue gown,
Like you would do for one that you love.”

– Take this Longing

“I’m aching for you, baby.
I can’t pretend I’m not.
I need to see you naked,
In your body and your thought.”

– Ain’t No Cure for Love

“If you want a lover,
I’ll do anything you ask me to.”

– I’m Your Man

“They opened to me urgently,
like lilies from the dead.
Behind a fine embroidery,
her nipples rose like bread.”

– The Night of Santiago

“When she bends to my longing like a willow, like a fountain,
She stands in the luminous air
And the night comes on, it’s very calm
I lie in her arms and she says when I’m gone
I’ll be yours, yours for a song.”

– Night Comes On

“Just dance me to the dark side of the gym
Chances are I’ll let you do almost anything
I know you’re hungry, I can hear it in your voice
And there are many parts of me to touch, you have your choice.”

– Memories

“You are the naked angel in my heart
You are the woman with her legs apart.”

– Paper-Thin Hotel

They make me a secret place
In there busy lives
And they take me there
They become naked in their different ways.”

– Because Of

“Don’t go home with your hard-on.”

– Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On

[All words are my own, unless stated otherwise. No copyright infringement intended.]

The Elephant and the Dove

Image courtesy of art.com

“The pain, the body, the city, the country. Kahlo. Frida, the art of Frida Kahlo.”

Never is the phrase ‘life imitates art’ more applicable than in reference to the life and work of Frida Kahlo.

Considered a modernist surrealist, her most famous works depict alarming, jarring images spurned from her constant daily battles with physical pain. Her tortured narrative. Yet, initially when one hears her name, images of bright colours and tropical flowers often spring to mind. Almost Aztec-inspired, and jovial in their nature. A fusion of bold vibrancy and nightmarish acid trip elements. Intriguing, no?

So where did it all begin?

To say Frida was no stranger to pain would be more than something of a mild understatement. This woman’s body literally held out for as long as it could (all of forty-seven years) which, given what it went through, actually wasn’t bad.

Frida famously described her body as tortured and cursed; betraying her on the daily, and that it was actively failing. To those outside of Frida’s personal orbit, this might be considered a classic overreaction from a textbook hypochondriac. Not the case. This was actually exactly what was happening.

It all kicked off (bad pun intended) when Frida contracted polio at aged six, which caused a growth defect in one of her legs, resulting in a ‘shrivelled’ appearance, as the leg in question was shorter and thinner than the other, thus leaving her with a lifelong limp. In writer Carlos Fuentes’ biography he described her as going from a beautiful, happy child; renowned for her ribbons and bows and adorable hairdo, to then being considered a circus freak in the eyes of her young peers; who would mercilessly bully her at school, dubbing her Frida pata de palo, which translates to Frida the Peg-leg. She would go on to spend the rest of her life self-conscious of this defect and it would be one of the reasons behind her trademark long, billowing skirts.

There is a general respite in physical torment for almost twelve years, which would then come crashing down with absolute gusto in 1925, when at aged eighteen, whilst returning home from school one afternoon, the wooden bus she was riding on collided with a streetcar on a busy street in Mexico City. The injuries she sustained from this accident were almost unimaginable. Here’s the general recorded low-down: a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, four broken ribs, eleven different fractures in her disfigured leg, at least two dislocated vertebrae, and a crushed foot. As if this wasn’t bad enough, a bus handrail had become detached and had impaled her through her lower back, exiting out of her vagina, shattering her pelvis in the process. Ouch…

Naturally, Frida was out of action for a good while. Her recovery entailed months and months of operations, bed-rest, physiotherapy, and body-casts and corsets designed to re-join her broken body, with materials ranging from typical plaster to stainless steel. In her lifetime, she had a whopping THIRTY-TWO operations. It’s now a bit easier to understand why Frida didn’t speak too highly of her body.

In theory she survived this accident, but in a way she also didn’t. The impact of her injuries would rear its ugly head in every corner of her life, and marked the beginning of the slow, lengthy descent towards her death. With the medical care of that time period being not quite what it is today, her body just couldn’t restore itself. As she got older she was in and out of hospital having gangrened fingers and toes amputated, and eventually her leg at the knee, forcing her to spend her few remaining years wheelchair-bound. Her extensive reliance on alcohol as a way of self-medicating and managing her pain obviously had counterproductive results on her body’s ability to heal and function. It’s said that she pre-empted her passing, and in the weeks running up to her death she jokingly referred to herself as a ‘walking corpse’…

Bet she was a hoot at parties… (she actually was but we’ll get to that later.)

“I am the subject I know best.”

The plus-side to all of this unholy mess – the silver lining – was that it would trigger her love of drawing and painting, and would be the carving of her artistic legacy. Whilst bed-ridden, with her movement exclusively limited to her hands and arms, she would wile away the hours by turning her white plaster body-cast into a mural of beautiful flowers, before moving on to more serious artistic endeavours, in which her dad would then rig up drawing boards with canvases attached from her bedframe so she could paint whilst lying down. The ramifications of both her injuries and the time it took to generally recover had shattered her dream of becoming a doctor, but ignited her love of art. Definitely a ‘no shit’ moment to the classic ‘everything happens for a reason’ theory…

Image courtesy of gravelandgold.com

She became an established artist and a household name in her own right, with her paintings being engines of her cathartic release. A lot of her well-known pieces are self-portraits which depict the alarming effects of her physical (and often emotional) state.

The damage from the handrail had rendered her reproductive system only semi-functional at best, which sparked a continual crisis within her about childbearing and would it be worth the potential physical and emotional risks. All of this is very evident in her self-portraits.

Speaker of Pain

So, it’s fairly easy for us to empathise with Frida’s use of art to tell her story and to exercise her various physical demons, but Frida was also very politically-motivated and only too aware of the events of the world. Her childhood years from aged three to thirteen were dominated by the Mexican Revolution, which saw over one million of her people slaughtered. She also lived through both of the World Wars, with her ancestry going back to German and Hungarian Jewish origin, and so was naturally rattled by Hitler and Stalinism. She was a lifelong member of the Communist party, and so the Arms Race and McCarthyism that rumbled along in the background of her later years played a part in her anxiety.

She also notably allowed for some dark humour to creep into her work. At some point, she was commissioned to paint a tribute portrait of young Hollywood starlet who had committed suicide by jumping off of a building – and her tribute would be exactly that. An image of this woman sailing out of the window and crashing to the ground…

It’s not known as to whether the painting was some rather dark and rather tasteless joke, or whether Frida was just moved by this woman’s dramatic exit and wanted recreate her final journey. Latino culture famously celebrates death as a beginning and not something to be mourned, so the thought-process behind it was a matter of some debate. Either way, the commissioner reportedly nearly fainted at the sight of it. Individuals much-less concerned by propriety, however, thought it was hilarious. Nevertheless, it was a piece of art that wouldn’t be forgotten in a hurry.

The Elephant and the Dove

Image courtesy of art.com

Frida met and fell in love with the famous Mexican mural painter, Diego Rivera. They married and then divorced and then married again (as you do) and remained married until her death in 1954. Though the relationship was somewhat volatile and fraught with infidelities from both parties, as well as antagonised by her physical pain, his workaholic nature and lack of sensitivity, and then temporarily fractured by a very aggressive miscarriage that had hospitalised Frida for two weeks, thus triggering a months-long depression, theirs was a coupling that defied a lot of odds. They were mutually supportive and unquestioning of each other’s artistry, abundant in affection, physically and politically compatible, and simply loved each other in a way a Brontë sister might have written about. Not quite #couplegoals, but not far off.

Those who have seen pictures of them together will understand the meaning behind the ‘elephant and the dove’ reference, which was initially coined by Frida’s folks upon hearing the news of their marital ambitions. Let’s just say that Diego wasn’t beauty pageant fodder. He was built like a brick shit-house and had a face for radio, bless him.

So What Makes Frida a Badass?

I think the more relevant question is what doesn’t make her a badass?!

It’s acceptable to suggest that Frida’s work is an acquired taste, and not necessarily the type of art you’d like to see first thing in the morning hanging on your bedroom wall. But she was brash, unique and unapologetic in her artistry and she didn’t give a foof what anyone thought of her. She painted what the hell she felt like, wore what the hell she felt like, drank what the hell she felt like (and that girl LOVED her tequila), fucked who the hell she felt like (I don’t condone adultery, of course, but it’s more a context sort of thang), swore like a sailor, and could fiesta ‘til the cows came home.

But what I really like and what is a continual theme within my writing, is women (particularly women from yesteryear) who aren’t afraid to stand within their power, and have no issue defying expectations and saying ‘you know what? Sod you. I’m doing life my way or the highway.’ It’s not easy – even today – to have that attitude and it sure as hell couldn’t have been easy for a woman in 1920s Mexico living under a fascist dictatorship and within a tortured body that straight-up just wouldn’t play ball. So for that I say good on ‘er! Vive la Frida!

[All words are my own and are subject to copyright, with the exception of the opening quote, which is from writer Carlos Fuentes. Information is sourced from both him and essayist Sarah M. Lowe. Illustrations by Frida courtesy of La Vaca Independientes. All other images are referenced above. No copyright infringement.]